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Populism being the point of democracy or am I missing something? How can that be "often to the same end" than totalitarism?

• helen___keller 5y ago
  It might be a little misleading to say populism is the point of democracy, but you're not wrong. Either way, "the same end" referring to massive surveillance, social controls, etc. In China obviously the CCP does all that In the West, it happens more or less organically through populism: communities all installing ring cam, cancelling people on twitter, etc. It's driven by populism instead of totalitarianism. And that's not even to say it's all bad either, if the vast majority of people want to see a neo-nazi lose their public service job, is cancel culture really that bad in this situation? Like you mentioned, that's essentially democracy. However, it can get out of control when it's gone unchecked. Every now and then you see one of those "cancel culture gone wrong" articles upvoted to the top here, where one quote out of context gets amplified on social media and ends in lost jobs and death threats. The real problem is that there is no mechanism to keep the overwhelming power of modern populism in check. The country wasn't designed in an era where a million people could start a shit storm together from separate geographies. In the 18th century, you needed to get enough angry people in one location to form a mob. That only happened in rare and exceptional circumstances. It was self limiting, in a way. The internet has changed the rules, so societies are still learning to adapt.